The other day I was looking at the Phillies website. I’m from there, so I continue to follow the team. Something was bugging me about the their site, and I couldn’t figure it out. I finally did. Look at this capture from their site. Do you see what’s wrong with it?
I didn’t pick up on it right away, but perhaps you will. Take a look. If you can’t figure it out, highlight the text below with your browser.
The baseball that is leaving the stadium in the picture is leaving in foul territory! That image is used to signify a home run ball flying out of the park. But this is a foul ball – behind the plate, and a little up the first base line!!!
I don’t know who was the bonehead that approved that picture, but I bet you they didn’t know much about the park that this image is supposed to be about!
Yeesh.

It annoyed me so much how we lost that game that not only did I not feel like writing about it, I didn’t feel like writing about Saturday’s game either – which we won (barely).

During the 2005 All-Star game, a transformer decided it was going to blow on my block, and I was without power tonight for several hours. It didn’t occur to me until right before the power was restored that I could have slapped on the radio, I think the game was on ESPN radio. That really bugged me, as I couldn’t see the game. When the power went out, the score was 3-0, and Mark Teixeira had more or less just popped out to second for his second at bat. I figured that was probably it for him anyway, two at bats is pretty decent in the All-Star game. When the power came back on, the game was over, and while there was a little more I could have watched, I had already seen the score, so I decided not to bother. I probably should have watched it, as I had Mark Teixeira’s home run on the TiVo.
I always watch the player introductions – that’s one of my favourite moments of an All-Star game (the one in Boston from 99 was the best I’d ever seen – Teddy Baseball’s appearance with Tony Gwynn brought tears to my eyes). For many years growing up (in Philly), I loved watching the All Star intros. I always got really excited at seeing “my guys” on the field – especially during the lean years when they played like crap, it was always exciting to me to see “my guy”. And that’s the reason I never want to get rid of the rule regarding every team has to have a representative. I know there’s a lot of call to remove that, but I think it needs to be there. The reason is that if a kid in Tampa Bay or Kansas City wants to watch the All-Star game, he should at least be able to go “Hey, that’s my guy!”. I know that feeling terribly well, and with the game having an image problem with the youth of America, I think we need to do things to appeal to them. Granted, I admit, it’s a very minor thing, but I loved that “my guys” feeling as a kid, and I don’t want to take that away. Hell, I’m 40, and I still get off on seeing Texas Ranger players there. It’s been better the last few years when we’ve sent 4 or 5 guys, but when we sent just one – “Hey, look there’s Pudge!” I really hope that doesn’t get taken away from me. Sure, it’s an imperfect system, and I’d say at least one or two really deserving players get shafted, but I don’t want to lose this.
Speaking of player introductions, I didn’t think Kenny Rogers got booed anywhere near the level I expected him to. There was a bit in the player intros, but I expected more than that. I will say that the replays of it I saw later on ESPNNews seemed like the booing was louder than it was originally – anyone else notice that? Due to the power outage, I didn’t get to see any of Kenny’s appearance in the game (nor did I see Soriano or Mike Young, either). I see from the news reports that he was booed coming on, booed when he gave up a home run, and booed again when he left the field. Now given the immaturity of the actions that got him here in the first place, I feel odd saying this, but… it seemed pretty good of him to go take his lumps, and particularly the quote I saw about the booing where he said that “They can say what they need to, that’s fine”. Hopefully this goes away after he comes back from suspension, but I tend to doubt it will, as national press loves a story like that.
I’d love to say I had a good time watching the game, but I didn’t, as I only saw a few innings, and then sat in darkness. Still, it was nice to see the Rangers have a good showing in terms of number of players again. Last year it was 5. This year it’s 4. All good.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

With Ryan Drese gone (that’s still irritating), the thought occurred to me this morning that when Kenny Rogers is serving his suspension, Chan Ho Park will be our “staff ace”.
Wow, is that a depressing thought. I know it’s not an original thought, but I thought about it when writing about the All-Star game this morning.
Thanks John Hart. First you screw up and give away Doug Davis, and now you’ve screwed up and given away Ryan Drese. Way to go. John Rocker’s available – sure you don’t want to give him another try?

Adam Morris over at lonestarball.com has an article up where he talks about a trade between the Rockies & the Nationals.
He theorizes that the Cubs were one of the people after Preston Wilson, and with Wilson off the market, they might be interested in trading for Soriano.
I wonder what we’d get from the Cubs for Soriano. Any thoughts?

I was reading Jim Reeves column in the Ft Worth Star Telegram today, and I felt like I wanted to say something about it. The article is about the Ryan Drese fiasco. The gist of the article is that Drese is making Ranger management look like morons for letting him go. Which I pretty much agree with. However, that’s not why I’m singling out this article. I loved this quote..

Drese is rapidly becoming general manager John Hart’s worst nightmare, somewhere between Randy Galloway and Kenny Rogers.

I actually laughed out loud at the Galloway & Rogers comparison. I’ve always believed that management will always withhold pieces of information. That’s their perogative. You can’t always tip your hand to the other teams, so I’m willing to accept that there’s pieces of info that aren’t meant for us. I’m good with all that. A lot of fans and press will say “They’re lying through their teeth about everything”. I can’t agree with that – a lot of it will fall under what I just said, withholding the real truth – we get a cliche instead. I’m still OK with that.
But the Ryan Drese thing – there HAS to be something more than their stated reason of “just performance”. Especially when you read that Connor & Hershisher wanted to keep him. As they’re the two pitching coaches, I would have to defer to their judgement.
This is the first time I’ve ever really questioned my own backing of Ranger management. Not a blind backing, but one that is willing to overlook a lot under the guise of “we don’t really know all the details, so I’m not going to automatically villify them” like a lot of folks do.
Anyway, thanks Jim – I enjoyed the laugh above. :)

Today when I went to do the recap for last night’s game, I noticed that the site I got the box score from dumped their old “plain text” version in favor of a formatted version.
I’d much rather have a plain text version – does anyone know of a website that still has plain text box scores for MLB games online?
If so, drop me a line. Thanks.

There’s a rumour going around the last day or so about the Rangers trading Laynce Nix (and some others) for Gary Sheffield.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. John Hart is certainly not akin to bringing in a moody player (John Rocker, Carl Everett), but I don’t know how I feel about him. I’d be surprised if the Yankees would WANT to trade him, tell you the truth.
Nix has underproduced, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if I’m ready to give up on him just yet. I know we’re strong in the minors in the OF, but trading a young kid for someone like Sheffield seems odd to me. I’m sure Sheffield would shred in our park. It would make our outfield likely Mench – Matthews – Sheffield (as I can’t imagine we’d keep Hidalgo if we brought in Shef). I don’t have a problem with that OF, but we’d have Shef through 2006 for sure at something like $13 million, I think.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Post a comment.
Check out what Gary has to say about not wanting to be traded in this article over on mlb.com. Not sure I’d want that.

I unfortunately missed the uniform number that Tejera wore when he was with us for the last few days in the bigs. Does someone remember what that was? I want to update my Uniform Number History section with that. Leave a comment here. Thanks.

This Tuesday through Thursday, the Rangers do something they’ve never done before. Play the Phillies in a regular season game. As I’m from Philly, I would have loved to have gone, but I couldn’t afford it.
Bet the house I’ll be watching all three of these from start to finish.
I just hope they come here next week. And here’s to Kevin Mench – hope he has a monster series back home!